Maternal Smoking Costly Two Ways

"I think it sends a message loud and clear to HMOs (health maintenance organizations) that smoking mothers are going to cost them almost $200 more per live birth . . . ."

- Gerry Oster, medical economist.

The results of a study on women who smoke and the effect it has on their newborn children by a Brookline, Mass., research firm will be no surprise to physicians and health-care workers in hospital nurseries. But the financial burden the smoking mother-to-be costs her insurance carrier (and others who share such group protection plans) may bring the maternal smoking issue out of the hospital and into the insurance marketplace.

The most significant finding of the study, conducted by Policy Analysis Inc., is that maternal smoking costs Americans $152 million a year in additional medical expenses. The figure breaks down to about $170 per smoking mother whose newborn weighs in under 5.5 pounds and requires intensive care. Of the nearly 248,000 babies who started life under 5.5 pounds in the U.S. in 1983, about 13 percent of them - or 31,000 - were born to mothers who smoked. The study concluded that 13,000 of the undersized infants required care in hospital intensive care units, at a cost of $152 million.

It is an interesting commentary on human nature and our priorities that it may be the dollar issue - not the health issue - that has been responsible for focusing attention on the health and financial problems caused by maternal smoking.